writing, communications & media

Digital Activism and Creating online videos

Before I began the process of making this video I spent a lot of time thinking about what subject to do. I started with the idea of doing the cultural heritage topic. I downloaded about ten articles from the Deakin University Library, but as I started reading I wasn’t sure if it was the right topic. Then one day while walking to work I passed by some activist posters in the street. I took a few photos of the posters and this became my inspiration for choosing the topic digital activism. I also included these photos in the introduction of my video.

So after deciding the subject, I downloaded another ten articles this time on the subject of digital activism. I read six but two of them didn’t inspire me in any way. One article (Abbeghoziladeh 2014) did however and this became the main focus of my video and also the article I learned a lot from apart from (Carty 2015).

After reading as much as I could, I then started looking up websites related to the topic and started following various social activist groups on twitter. One of these was Equal Love.

I took some screenshots of the Equal Love website and was thinking to do more screenshots when I realised by re-reading the assessment outline that there may be copywrite problems with taking screenshots. I would have to get permission. This wouldn’t have been a problem, but I decided to keep things as simple as possible.

I thought about doing an interview with someone from an activist organisation but found it hard to find “the leader’ to contact. I now realise this is the way many digital activism sites are set up these days.

For the introduction of the video I spent a few hours looking up pictures on flicker and also found the music to go with the introduction from dig.ccmixter.org. I noted down all the references for the photos and music as I went along. Doing this proved to be helpful when it came to adding credits at the end, but I found the organising of the credits and providing links to the photos and music, very time consuming.

For a test, I recorded myself with a camera. But the sound wasn’t very good so I recorded myself with my Iphone and copied it to the computer. The sound was better, but still not to a level I would have liked. I did some research on YouTube (recording a video with iPhone) and realised that it is possible to record a decent video using an Iphone but you need to use a microphone. I bought a clip on microphone from JB Hi FI and spent one whole day writing a draft of what I was going to say. Then I recorded small 20-30 second sections of myself talking.

I wasn’t very happy with what I saw and heard of myself on screen and kept thinking of other ideas, even writing a creative script and getting actors but there didn’t seem enough time for that. Even after recording about 20 scenes, I found some sort of problem with every clip but despite this I put them all together to make the seven minute video.

Overall I know the continuity of the video could improve and there are editing glitches. But I am happy that I overcame my fear of talking and uploading a video to YouTube.

In the future I will work on filming more of my own footage, and editing it between talking to the camera and doing more voice overs.

(603 words)

My Broader ACL708 – related online activity

To further my online activity I have regularly created tweets, and tweeted videos or ideas I have liked, I’ve responded to all my Soundcloud comments and made other comments on others Soundcloud uploads. I have written blog articles, a recent one being how I created my podcast.